Last February 22nd, Maxim D. Shrayer was special guest at Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica at Pisa University (Italy): author, scholar, translator and professor (Boston College, USA), Shrayer was in Pisa to present the students and general public the newly-published Italian translation of his A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas.
Prof. Maxim D. Shrayer was joined by Prof. Marco Sabbatini, professor at Pisa University and director of the series Masterskaja20 (WriteUp Books), and Stefano Garzonio, former professor of Slavistics at Pisa University.
Shrayer, who spent the summer of 1987 in Italy (Ladispoli, Rome) as a refugee before finally leaving Europe for his final destination, USA, introduced his book with a brief but emotional remarks in Italian and then shifted to Russian (with Prof. Sabbatini’s Italian translation). Shrayer spoke about the roots of his narrative, and explained his own particular and complex identity: Soviet; Russian; Jewish; American; Israeli, born in Europe, but living mainly in USA since the age of twenty.
Shrayer told the audience about his family’s years as refuseniks, whom the Soviet regime considered “guilty” of just asking for permission to leave URSS; Shrayer and his family waited 8 years before receiving the authorization to leave!
The event culminated with a live reading of Vozvrashchenie (Homecoming), one of Shrayer’s Russian-language poems:: the power of the language, the pauses, and the sonority of the meter witnessed the mind of a man who, in front of the Italian audience, transitioned from speaking in as an academic to communicating to communicating the most intimate voice of the heart.